Senior leadership is reluctant to fund a three-month creator/influencer pilot that your team recommends. How would you build the business case, define success metrics and budget allocation, structure the pilot, and secure stakeholder buy-in?

When leadership hesitates I lead with a tight, numbers-first experiment. I’d propose a three-month pilot with 8–10 micro + mid-tier creators, a $30,000 budget (about $2.5–3.5k per creator, $6k for production/reporting) and a 3-person squad to manage briefs, paid amplification and tracking. We’d baseline current metrics, then set clear targets: 1M impressions, +20% followers on targeted channels, engagement rate ≥3.5% (vs baseline 1.8%), and CPA under $30 or 3x content-level ROI. The pilot runs as A/B: creator-driven assets vs brand posts, UTMs and incrementality tests measure attributed leads/sales. I secure buy-in with competitor benchmarks, a phased payment tied to milestones, a weekly executive dashboard, and predefined stop/go thresholds — if KPIs hit we scale, if not we pivot or reallocate funds.